Lautze, Jonathan

In natural resource governance, there has been a drive for increased decentralization through stakeholder engagement. One of the go-to solutions for policymakers and program managers is to develop Multistakeholder Platforms (MSPs). MSPs have become an increasingly common approach to structure sustained and meaningful stakeholder participation. With the proliferation of cooperative arrangements for natural resource governance at a transboundary scale, there has been an increasing number of transboundary river basin MSPs. This paper reviews the state of research on transboundary MSPs, with a focus on water resource management, to inform a research agenda on transboundary resource governance. We argue that MSPs can be an important mechanism to improve governance in shared basins, depending on the actors, process and context. However, more research is needed to better understand the relationship between cross-sectoral MSPs and existing formal governance institutions. We propose six avenues for research to improve transboundary MSPs in theory and practice.